“Todd Howe, the disgraced lobbyist whose testimony prosecutors hope will lead to the corruption convictions of a former top aide to New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and three businessmen, told a Manhattan jury Monday that he stole roughly $1 million from Whiteman Osterman & Hanna LLP before he was fired in 2016.
Howe, a cooperating witness who pled guilty in the bribery and extortion case targeting former Cuomo aide Joe Percoco and co-defendants Peter G. Kelly Jr., Steven Aiello and Joseph Gerardi, spent Monday on the stand as a third week of trial before U.S. District Judge Valerie E. Caproni got underway.
Percoco is accused of taking $35,000 from Aiello and Gerardi for helping their Syracuse real estate development company, COR Development Co., win lucrative state contracts. Percoco also is accused of taking $287,000 from Kelly, whose Competitive Power Ventures Holdings LLC sought to build power plant near New York City. Howe is said by prosecutors to have been the man in the middle who facilitated the illegal payments.
On the stand Monday Howe told the jury that he has known Percoco since the late 1980s, when both were associated with former Gov. Mario Cuomo and worked in the Albany area.
“[Percoco] was probably the closest thing to a brother that I ever had,” Howe said of the man he is now testifying against in an effort to stay out of prison.
Read more at: https://www.law360.com/articles/1009186/ex-ny-lobbyist-tells-jury-life-of-thieving-led-to-plea?copied=1″
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